Context-sensitive regularities in English vowel spelling

✍ Scribed by Mark Aronoff; Eric Koch

• Book ID: 104768532
• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1020 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0922-4777
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00420278

✦ Synopsis

The predictive value of rime spellings in English was compared directly to other types of regularities beyond the level of the single letter. A computer-assisted analysis of a list of twenty-four thousand written words, each paired with its corresponding pronunciation, reveals that only a small number of rime spellings are highly regular in their pronunciations. The conventional division of vowel letter pronunciations into short and long in closed and open written syllables is the most reliable key to English pronunciation. Our findings support the notion that English spelling is based at least in part on syllable structure. In addition, prefixes and suffixes provide very reliable clues to pronunciation, which suggests that their regularity should be exploited in the teaching of reading.